Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bibliography of South America


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Spartaz Humbug! 13:46, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Bibliography of South America

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Talk about an open-ended list. We have quite a few pages along the lines of Bibliography of World War I, which tend to be large, but one for an entire continent? These criteria: relating to the subject of South America, its history, geography, culture, people, etc. really don't leave out anything at all. I can guarantee that in the course of two hour's mechanical googling, I can swell this list by 1000 (referenced) entries, and the result will do no one any good at all. I think had the right idea trying to abolish this. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:21, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:21, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Bibliographies-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 22:27, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of South America-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 22:27, 4 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete Incredibly vague, arbitrary, and useless. This is an WP:INDISCRIMINATE list of unrelated books somehow tied to a massive topic about which (and its subtopics) tens of thousands of books have been written. There's "Soccer in sun and shadow" (yeah they do play soccer in South America), "Traveling with Che Guevara: The Making of a Revolutionary" (better known for time in Cuba, but he was killed in Bolivia), "The road to Gobblers Knob: From Chile to Alaska on a motorbike" (yes you can travel in the continent), and "The last monarch butterfly: conserving the monarch butterfly in a brave new world" (South America is in fact one of the five continents it lives on). From modern travel guides and memoirists' travelogues to histories of specific countries and biographies, to books that are about all of Latin America or the Western Hemisphere, there is no rhyme or reason to this list, and there are no inclusion criteria that can reasonably define its contents. Moreover, it serves no purpose to the reader. Pages like History of South America, Geography of South America, Economy of South America, and the articles on respective countries at Outline of South America or other specific topics are best suited to provide relevant information and resources. WP:Further reading sections are good, but it serves no encyclopedic purpose to lump together indiscriminate, disparate sources rather than organizing in relevant pages like Amazon rainforest, Inca Empire, or History of Colombia. Reywas92Talk 23:54, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete This is an article that, if comprehensive, could never be reasonably contained. Wikipedia is not a repository of indiscriminate information. -Indy beetle (talk) 06:39, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per Reywas92. ―NK1406 03:19, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep The topic clearly passes WP:LISTN – a list of similar bibliographies follows. These demonstrate that the topic is quite manageable.  We have bibliographies for other large regions such as the Soviet Union and United States.  To exclude a major region of the global south would be arbitrary and outrageous systemic bias – note that there are no separate blibliography pages for subdivisions such as Brazil.  The topic is limited to sources in English which is sensible as it limits the scope to the works which our English language readers will be wanting.  If the page should grow too large then we just split it per WP:SPLIT.  Deleting the page when we already have a reasonable start on the topic would be defeatist, disruptive and contrary to policies such as WP:ATD, WP:NOTPAPER and WP:PRESERVE. Andrew🐉(talk) 00:10, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
 * A Bibliography of South America
 * Ethnographic Bibliography of South America
 * Latin America, a Selected Functional and Country Bibliography
 * Latin America and the Caribbean – A Bibliographical Guide to Works in English
 * Latin America: Hemispheric Partner – A Bibliographic Survey
 * Note that these works list numerous bibliographies as well as individual works and so there's plenty more.
 * We don't have a "Bibliography of the United States" - we have 20+ bibliographies for bits as small as Wake Island (this is your link). Are you vaguely aware of the scale differences involved here? And what currently exists is a random hodgepodge of things vaguely connected to South America, as Reywas shows above; there's hardly even anything to salvage for putative more limited bibliographies. Although of course you are welcome to make a copy and try, I guess. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 01:22, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Once again, BS. Just because back in the '60s when one didn't have a search bar and a librarian or researcher compiled books A,B,C,D.... into a bibliography hundreds of pages long (and may have provided annotations), that does not mean it is appropriate or notable to independently and indiscriminately compile the arbitrary books X,n,Q,6,z... By no means is this what LISTN describes: While I'm sure you would be happy to copy and paste every title in the catalog of the Library of Congress into these bibliographies and splitting indefinitely, this is an encyclopedia, not an inventory of any book on any broad topic. Reywas92Talk 08:03, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
 * That's an argument against bibliographies in general but it's clear that Wikipedia accepts such articles. What the nay-sayers fail to provide is a good reason why this part of the globe should be blanked when we have plenty of comparable coverage of other parts.  The main languages in Latin America are Portuguese and Spanish but this bibliography focusses on works in English, as appropriate for this language version of Wikipedia.  This provides a sensible filter and there's no evidence that the result is impractical or unfeasible. My !vote stands. Andrew🐉(talk) 11:08, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I know that, but others need to see how dumb your arguments are. No part of the globe is being "blanked": we have massive lists of relevant books listed at specific pages like History_of_Latin_America, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, History_of_Bolivia, Ecuador, History_of_Brazil, Latin_America, and many others, and those on this page are welcome in any other article's further reading section! Any suggesting that I am promoting systemic bias by not arbitrarily lumping together an indiscriminate selection of context-free unrelated book titles is a baseless personal attack. Inclusion of any English books is a nonsensical filter, with no explanation whatsoever why these books, out of hundreds of thousands published on the people, places, and creatures of an entire continent, are here, is a complete and utter failure of LISTN. Reywas92Talk 03:40, 14 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep. I agree that this meets WP:LISTN, which is the primary criterion on which it should be judged. The argument that the topic is too broad isn't convincing: we have lots of articles on vast topics (life, history, outer space, etc.) that we keep to a manageable size using summary style and editorial discretion. There's no reason the same principles can't be applied to a bibliography: if this grows to an unreasonable length (which I'll note hasn't happened yet in the more than a decade since it was created) or if there's a consensus it's WP:INDISCRIMINATE in its current form, we could split off sections by geographical or historical divisions or by field, and/or we could apply any number of criteria to limit the list's scope. There's probably a need for a broader discussion of how we approach bibliographies, especially topical ones rather than ones for authors – are they intended to be comprehensive; if so are they indiscriminate, and if not how do we decide what to include and what to leave out (does anyone else think there should be a separate Wikimedia project for bibliographies?) – but there certainly seems to be a consensus that we ought to have them, and in this case resolving whatever problems this one may have is preferable to deletion. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 14:07, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. This article should be kept, but it should be also defined more precisely, as a bibliography of works that are dedicated to South America in general, as a whole continent, therefore excluding works with narrower scopes, like those dedicated to particular countries. Sorabino (talk) 00:13, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:IINFO; far too broad for a manageable list.  Sandstein   10:37, 13 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete- Overly broad and indiscriminate. Also protest the use of "other stuff exists" arguments to make a thinly veiled accusation of racism against the nom and delete !voters. Reyk YO! 11:26, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete: There needs to be some kind of meaningful inclusion criteria for any list and I think this is especially true for Bibliographies. This has none. The topic itself is impossibly indiscriminate, if it were "Bibliography of South American geography" or "Bibliography of pre-colonial South American history", or something similar it would work, but this is just a random collection of books with no inclusion criteria, without any relation to each other, about anything related to South America. Further a majority of the listings are not about South America as a continent, but about some sub division of South America. Even if the article was renamed and inclusion criteria added, it would take TNT to fix the content. There is nothing here worth saving.  // Timothy :: talk  12:26, 14 March 2021 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.